Great North Run 2009

By Edward Collier

The Winchcombe Hill Climb 10k had a successful launch on 30 August, together with a 5k run, now in its third year, reviving the long-standing tradition of a run associated with Winchcombe's annual Flower Show.

Here's a little known fact - Newcastle is a very, very long way away. Not from Gateshead, obviously; a long way from Cheltenham. Although I suppose if you cross continents on a weekly basis it's more or less the next town along.

Whatever, it's a long way away for me, which is at least part of the reason I have never run the Great North Run before. That and the cost - £45! And that's just for the entry, never mind getting there, staying somewhere and getting home (you're probably forming the impression around now that I'm not one of life's great trail-blazers).

So when Jean Bryan told me that she knew of some GNR numbers going begging (i.e. free) the "mean" gene kicked in and usurped the "unadventurous" gene, and I applied for one. Yippee! I'd saved myself £45! What I hadn't saved myself was the train ticket (£60), accommodation (£60), bus transfer to start and finish (£22), not to mention the replacement ticket because the returning bus got stuck in traffic and we missed the train (I'll draw a discreet veil over the cost of that).

I don't want to come across as someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing, so here's a potted history of the highlights. Jean and I met at Cheltenham station and boarded the train. We both had reserved seats, but not in the same carriage. Nevertheless, we managed to sit together for most of the way and filled up on sandwiches and cake. We were both staying in student accommodation in Durham - but not in the same college. We parted company at the bus stop, each of us hoping that the people we'd asked about which bus to take hadn't been having a laugh at our expense. Turned out the man sitting next to me on my bus had attended the college I was staying at. Which was helpful when it came to getting off. In the evening we met in town, walked around the cathedral which is stunning, and then found an Italian restaurant that didn't have half an hour wait for a table, where we bumped into another Almost Dave Chittock.

I could go on at great length about the spartan quality of the room, the firmness of the bed, the wateryness of the breakfast porridge, but this is a running club, not a hotel reviewing society. Suffice it to say that boarding school was a good preparation.

The arrangement in the morning was that I had to be at a particular location in Durham at 7.15 to catch the bus to the start. Various enquires about how to get there (it was about two or three miles away) elicited the following - "You'll not get a taxi in Durham on a Sunday morning", and the assurance that I could catch a bus just down the road that would get me there on time.

Well, the bus didn't turn up. So I had to run, dragging my suitcase on wheels, in the bottom of which was the map telling me where I had to go. I'm renowned for my planning, I'll have you know. There was no-one about to ask except - hang on, what's that over there? It's a taxi (of which there are apparently none in Durham on a Sunday). Sadly, not only was it booked, but the driver didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Talk about Britain and the United States being divided by a common language, what about Cheltenham and Durham? So I set off again in what luckily turned out to be the right direction, found a hotel with a receptionist who had a map, and finally, a great deal hotter and sweatier than I wanted to be, saw the queue for the bus where I located Jean and Dave.

It wasn't probably the best preparation for a hard race - adrenaline having the habit of leaching energy from important stores that had previously been full of last night's delicious fusili arrabbiata. But that was all soon forgotten as we drove along, past The Angel Of The North, in beautiful bright sunshine. What could go wrong now, I thought? Whatever happens, I'm going to run the race - that's all that matters.

Well, what could go wrong is that the coach driver didn't know where he was going. So that was £22 well spent. Eventually he just more or less dumped us somewhere that turned out to be about half a mile from the start. Which was fine, since there was only the small matter of a 2 hour 40 minute wait until the race began. It was quite cold even though it was sunny, and we glanced enviously at the couple next to us who were putting on those white paper disposable suits that forensic scientists wear in TV police stories. It turned out that the man worked for the council clearing out dirty properties, and he'd been on "Life of Grime". We'd met our first celebrity.

Running as a bandit (or, as I prefer to think of it, under the Almost Athletes Number Transfer Scheme or AANTS), you pays no money and you takes your choice. Which, in my case, turned out to be running as Sarah Young, who must have put a finishing time on her entry form that required a calendar rather than a stopwatch. Each Zone (which equated to a stated finishing time) was penned in with security guards examining your number and only letting you in if it was the right one. It was about half a mile away from the start before I was finally allowed in, and I realised that any hope of a PB was gone (not that I was realistically thinking of a PB - I just wanted to get my excuse in early). However, I made my way up to the front of the pen, where there was a rope to keep us from going any further in the direction of the start into a "higher" pen.

What I did next might seem, to some, inexcusable. When the guards weren't looking, I ducked under the rope and walked into the next Zone. The way I rationalised it was this: the people around me were not going to be running as fast as me (don't worry, I asked!), so in the race we would get in each others' way. Plus, I had a train to catch. Jean and I had booked the same return but neither of us had properly looked at the start time. I'd thought 0930 - in fact it was 1040. The train back from Durham was 1437. If the race took two hours, then we had two hours at the end to find our baggage, find our coach, and get back to Durham. Plus, the coach was due to deliver us back to where we'd started - about three miles from the railway station. Didn't I say I was renowned for my planning?

I'm getting ahead of myself. My rope-ducking trick worked twice more but the final pen I entered had a big metal barrier at the front. I'd gone as far forward as I was able. Still, I could now see the start without the aid of a telescope. Finally Sting fired the starting pistol and we were off.

It took ten minutes just to get to the line, but at least we were running. Well, running after a fashion. Even this early people were walking, sometimes two abreast, which made finding a moderately straight path extremely tricky. At various points I ran on the pavement (it wasn't only me - there were other faster runners who had also started out of sequence), and I ran on the central reservation, and I ran on some very tricky diamond-shaped blocks the purpose of which entirely defeated me unless they were designed to stop people running on them.

After a few miles it wasn't quite as packed, and I finally managed to steer a straight course. There were still the occasional moving traffic jams - people who had stopped running but had remained in the middle of the road, and I hit one or two (not with my fist, I just didn't see them and ran into them). Still everyone was jolly and there were no hard feelings. I saw Jean along the way and we exchanged grunts.

The race itself was otherwise a bit of a blur. I'm not used to running half marathons on courses that I've never run before - Stroud I've done about twelve times, and Tewkesbury about the same - so a virgin course was a bit of a treat. The sad thing is that it's actually not that great a course. No, let me rephrase that - it's a completely rubbish course. For a start, it's uphill the whole way, apart from the famous hundred metre precipitous descent just before you turn left along the seafront. The problem of the course profile exercised my brain quite a lot, trying as I was to work out how I'd never previously heard that Newcastle was actually several hundred feet below sea level. And then, of course, there's the course itself, most of which is a dual carriageway with matching views. The support was fantastic, but you wouldn't go there for a picnic.

But the sea made it all worthwhile. The last mile (again, uphill) was fine, and for once I felt great. The crowds were immense and very loud, and when I could finally see the finish I realised that I'd had terrific race. Apart from a blister on my big toe I felt good. Now all that was left was about quarter of a mile to the baggage truck, and then another half a mile or so to the transfer bus.

Jean soon showed up and we compared notes. I didn't actually know what time I'd done because I'd put on the wrong watch and thought I'd pressed the wrong button. Jean soon figured it out for me and showed me that I had run 1 hour 32 min. Which, despite being over ten minutes outside my PB, was much better than I had anticipated.

The problem was that the bus we were on wasn't actually going anywhere. At least, not until it was full. The driver was sympathetic to our train-catching plight but obviously he had to wait until he was told to go. Still, he assured us, they'd changed the traffic arrangements from the previous year - coaches now had priority and we'd be in plenty of time. When we did finally set off he said he'd alter his route and drop us in town about five minutes from the station, and we began to get our hopes up.

Terrible thing, hope. Never get it up. We hit major traffic on the outskirts of South Shields and we weren't even in Durham when I showed my watch to Jean - 1437. We actually got to the station at about 1450 but, typically, the train was on time and we weren't.

The extra expense made it a pretty extravagant weekend away, especially considering the lack of sleep (my neighbour coughed, snored and sang all night, sometimes doing all three at once), the thin gruel pretending to be porridge, and having to walk and run everywhere. For the same outlay, I could probably have got the Eurostar to Paris and had a night in a lovely pension. So, given the option, which would I prefer?

What do you think - I'm a runner, not a hotel reviewer! So I'll just end by saying that while the race was very well organised and I'm extremely glad I've done it (though I won't be doing it again), if I had one criticism it would be the goody bag. An ordinary cotton t-shirt (not a technical shirt like London) with the same design as last year. A granola bar. Water, and a coloured sugary drink. A very nice medal, to be sure. A space blanket. And about half a dozen free samples of creams, gels (don't try eating any of them, Jean!) and a handful of flyers. And that's it. Yes, I know that £45 is supposed to buy you the experience not the goody bag - it turns out that maybe I am, after all, someone who knows the value of nothing and the price of everything.